Macs and Xy

["Alan Lothian" alanl@xxxxxxxx]

I've been following the discussion on Macs, Virtual PC and
Xywrite with some interest.

 In London publishing, Macs rule the roost: probably
 about 90%, perhaps more. In illustrated publishing,
 certainly more. We use high-end PCs for digital
  illustration (the CAD heritage showing through)
  and Macs with Quark and Illustrator/Photoshop
  for everything else.

 Doesn't bother me, much. I *like* my office G3,
 though it isn't perfect by any means.

  However, there's a serious lack of text processing
  tools for the Mac. I make my trainee writers use BBEdit,
  which isn't bad (what with grepping and all, it's almost
  a graphic Xywrite, though for writing purposes that's pretty
  irrelevant) but many companies have got into the habit of
  using Quark for casual office wordprocessing. (They really
 have. I am not making this up. Smallish companies with
 n licences... it even makes sense, if all your people have to
 be Quark-literate anyway, and all you need for office
 wordprocessing is a few letters. Beats a typewriter, and
 you've already bought it. And I share the group's opinion
  of Word.)

  If I can have Xy as a power tool on a Mac, as seems to
  be the developing consensus here, then I can feel
  my tail start to wag.

  And I like the idea of the ultimate graphics machine
  and the ultimate text software striding into the sunlit
  uplands of Y2K.

--

Alan Lothian

alanl@xxxxxxxx